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> Comparative Intellectual Histories of Early Modern Asia

The problem of early modernity inthe Sanskrit intellectual tradition

Anyone who aims to discuss the Sanskrit intellectual tradition of the early modern period is required to preface his exposition with two remarks. The first is the typical caution

offered by those in a new field of research, though in this case the caution truly has bite. Sanskrit science and scholarship from the 16th through the 18th centuries has only

jus t b egun to att rac t t he att enti on of scho lar s. In add ition, the vas t m ajority of text s have neve r b een publ ish ed, and som e o f t hese are hou sed in libr arie s and arc hive s wher e

access is either difficult or impossible. The second remark concerns a rather atypical language restriction on our problematic. In striking contrast to China or the Middle East,

while somewhat comparable to Western Europe, India in the early modern period shows a multiplicity of written languages for the cultivation of science and scholarship. But two

of these, Sanskrit and Persian, monopolised the field, and did so in ways that were both parallel and nonintersecting. Each constituted the principal language of science for its

associated social-religious sphere, while very few scholars were proficient in both (at least aside from mathematicians and astronomers, and even these were very much in the

minority). Sanskrit continued its pervasive, age-old dominance in the Hindu scholarly community, and merits consideration as a completely self-contained intellectual formation.

With those two clarifications in mind we can proceed to ask what actually occurred in the world of Sanskrit knowledge during the early modern period, and how a comparative

analysis may illuminate the general problem of modernity.

Sheldon Pollock

What happened in Sanskritintellectual history in theearly modern period?Two trends have begun to manifest

themselves to scholars working in theperiod, which are gradually hardening

into facts. The first is that an extraor-

dinary upsurge in writing across intel-

lectual disciplines can be observed

beginning in the 16th century. Second,

a gradual but unmistakable decline set

in beginning in the early 18th, which by

the centurys end had accelerated to the

point where one might be justified in

speaking of an evaporation of creative

energy in many Sanskrit disciplines.

The explosion of writing occurred in

a wide domain of scholarship. Con-

sider hermeneutics (mimamsa) and

political theory (raja-dharma-sastra). In

the former, a burst of writing begins

around 1550. For example, the premiercompendium on the subject, composed

around 1000 (the Sastra-dipika, Lamp

for the Science), which seems not to

have been touched for five centuries,

became the object of sustained reexam-

ination, with a half-dozen major reas-

sessments between 1550 and 1650. In

fact, that hundred-year period is prob-

ably the most productive era in the his-

tory of hermeneutics since the seventh

century. In political theory, from the

time of the Kritya-kalpataru (Wishing

Stone of Moral Duty) at the end of the

12th century to late 16th only a single,

minor work in the field was produced

(the Raja-niti-ratnakara of Candesvara

c. 1400). Beginning in 1575 or so, how-

ever, a range of often vast treatises werecomposed from within the heart of poli-

ties from Almor in the northern hills to

Tanjavur in the peninsula.

The same kind of uptick, though fol-

lowing a slightly different timeline, can

be found in many other domains. Sig-

nificant new work in logic was sparked

by the searching genius of Raghunatha

Siromani (c. 1550); in astronomy, too,

unprecedented contributions were

made starting with Jnanaraja in 1503.

In these and the other cases Ive cited,

we begin to find not just large amounts

of new writing but writing that is sub-

stantively new.

The trend we see is no mere artifact of

preservation. There is no evidence thatanything substantial in hermeneutics,

political theory, logic, or astronomy

was lost in the preceding period. Can-

desvaras work in political theory, for

example, refers to only one text from

the entire preceding two centuries. The

upsurge we see is real.

Nor was this trend a matter of mere

proliferation of texts. To an important

degree we find intellectual innovation

was as well. There is, for one thing, anew multidisciplinarity on the part of

scholars. Earlier hermeneutists never

wrote juridical treatises (or scholars of

jurisprudence hermeneutics), let alone

aesthetics; it now became common. In

addition, scholars adopted an entirely

new discursive idiom, the more abstract

language of the New Logic. Entirely

new scholarly genres began to appear:

in grammar, the Prakriya-kaumudi

(Moonlight of Transformations, and

its later imitation, the Siddhanta-kau-

mudi, Moonlight of Doctrine) radically

redesigned the most hallowed of Indian

intellectual monuments, the two-mil-

lennium-old grammar of Panini. At the

same time (and this is no contradiction),

a new concern with the textuality of thefoundational texts (in logic, for exam-

ple) is manifest though this nowhere

reaches the pitch of philological inno-

vation we find in late imperial China

or Humanist Italy. And with it came a

return to the sources; hermeneutists, for

example, begin to comment again direct-

ly on the sutrasof Jaimini. Most dramati-

cally, we find a new historical, perhaps

even historicist, conceptual framework

for understanding the development

of the knowledge systems. The late-

17th-century Nyaya-kaustubha (Divine

Jewel of Logic) organizes its exposition

by referring to the ancients, the fol-

lowers of the ancients, the moderns,

the most up-to-date scholars, and the

contemporaries. Knowledge is thoughtto be better not just because it may be

better (because of its greater coherence,

economy, or explanatory power), but

also in part because it is new. Consider,

finally, such claims to conceptual nov-

elty that begin to make their appear-

ance. Raghunatha defends what he calls

a philosophical viewpoint that emerges

precisely in opposition to the tenets of

all other viewpoints, while Dinakara

Bhatta (Varanasi, fl. 1620) announces

at the beginning of his treatise on

hermeneutics that he intends to prove

by other means, clarify, or even uproot

the thought of the outmoded authori-

ties. A century earlier the astronomer

Nilakantha Somayaji of Kerala dared to

argue that the astronomical parametersand models inherited from the texts of

the past were not in themselves perma-

nently correct, but needed constantly to

be improved and corrected based on a

systematic practice of observation and

reason. Few declarations of this sort had

been heard earlier in India.

All this changed fundamentally in the

course of the eighteenth century, when

or such is my present assessment the capacity of Sanskrit thought to make

history dramatically diminished in most

fields. The production of texts on politi-

cal theory ceased entirely; a few minor

works from Maratha Tanjavur are all we

can find. In hermeneutics the last con-

tribution of significance significant in

the eyes of the tradition itself is that of

Vancesvara Diksi ta (Tanjavur, fl. 1800);

in literary theory, that of Visvesvara

(Almora, fl. 1725). What we seem to be

witnessing in very marked contrast

to China or Western Europe is the

exhaustion of a once-great intellectual

tradition.

We are far from satisfactorily explain-

ing either the upsurge and the decline,

though we can make a much betterguess about the former than about the

latter. It seems to me rather obvious that

the conditions for unleashing the new

intellectual energies across the whole

range of social formations (from courtly

Tanjavur to free-market Varanasi) were

made possible by the Mughal peace,

with the consolidation of the empire by

Akbar (r. 1556-1605). As for the decline,

it is far more difficult to explain in either

intellectual-historical or social-historical

terms. Internally, we can perceive how

a moment of incipient modernity was

neutralized by a kind of neo-tradition-

alism, as Ill detail momentarily. Exter-

nally, the acceleration of a European

colonisation of the Indian imagination,

although still superficial in the 18thcentury, may have played a role, though

this has yet to be clearly demonstrated.

Consider the stunning fact almost too

stunning to be a fact that before 1800

we know of not a single thinker writing

in Sanskrit who refers to any European

form of knowledge.

Comparison: navyas, lesmodernes, and the problemof early modernity in IndiaThe history of Sanskrit knowledge sys-

tems in the early modern period shows

some astonishing parallels with contem-

poraneous Europe. Let me just examine

one of these in some detail that in both

its structure and its consequences is

representative of the whole conceptualcomplex.

In Sanskrit literary theory a consensus

about what made it possible to create

poetry had long reigned undisputed,

and was given canonical authority by the

11th-century thinker Mammata: poetry

can be produced only given the pres-

ence of three co-operating causes: tal-

ent, learning, and training. For the first

time in a thousand years this consen-

sus was challenged by a scholar namedSrivatsalanchana (Orissa, fl. 1550). He

claimed that talent alone was necessary,

while launching a frontal assault on the

whole conceptual edifice of Mammata,

whose views he dismisses, with rare

contempt, as completely fatuous. In

the 17th and early 18th centuries, how-

ever, the position of Srivatsalanchana

and his followers was itself the target

of a withering critique by a number

of scholars such as Bhimasena Diksita

(Kanyakubja, c. 1720), who vigorously

sought to reestablish the old consensus

against those they called the navyas,

the new scholars the term signified

something quite different from the

merely contemporary or present-day

(adhunika, adyatana) and this was asobriquet that Srivatsalanchana almost

certainly had claimed for himself.

If this dispute over the three causes

of poetic creativity seems minor, the

issues it raises for cultural theory are

not, something that comparison with

contemporaneous Europe allows us to

see with special clarity. The compari-

son also shows how differently India

and Europe responded to similar con-

ceptual challenges and how radically,

after centuries of homomorphism, their

intellectual histories diverged.

In India, the stakes in the dispute were

by no means as slight as they may

appear to be from our present vantage

point (where most literary stakes seemslight). Everyone participating in the

Sanskrit conversation clearly under-

stood that the rejection of learning and

training and the complete reliance on

inspiration was precisely the rejection

that many vernacularpoets had been

making since at least the 12th century.

And much of this vernacularity repre-

sented, not just an alternative to the

Sanskrit language, but to the Sanskrit

cultural and political order indeed, the

12th-century Kannada poet Basava is a

salient example.

Remarkably similar was the discourse

on the three sources of poetry in Europe

that began in the early 17th century. In

England this discourse was a basic com-ponent of neoclassicism a neoclassi-

cism that became increasingly reac-

tionary especially after 1688 which

was epitomised by Ben Jonson. For him

naturall wit, or talent, required the

discipline given by exercise, imitation

of classical models, and art, knowl-

edge of rules for effective expression.

A similar and earlier cultural complex

can be found in France, starting with

the Pliade in the mid-16th century.And in both cases was the neoclassical

view attacked. In France this occurred

famously in the Querelle des anciens et

des modernes, with Charles Perrault in

1688 celebrating inspiration (le gnie)

and ones own lights (propres lumires)

over the doxa of tradition, and, above all,

talent over training based on mechani-

cal imitation of the classics.

If the terms of the debate were nearly

identical, the outcomes and conse-

quences were fundamentally different.

In Europe, the historical development is

well known, leading to a transformation

of the sense of tradition and the past

indeed, if Frederic Jameson is correct,

it led to the very invention of the idea ofhistoricism, with the past being neither

better nor worse, just different. In India,

a potentially powerful idea of inspi-

ration outside traditions discipline,

and with it, a potentially transforma-

tive idea of freedom, died on the vine.

With one exception, Srivatsalanchana

had no defenders in the 17th century,

and was virtually forgotten thereafter

indeed, along with the debate itself.

More generally, the navya impulse

itself was largely repudiated. An even

more passionate defense of the status

of Mammata, unlike anything seen in

the past, was offered by Bhimasena,

who asserted that the moderns view

on talent is mere vaporizing that fails

to understand the hidden intention ofthe author, who was an incarnation of

the Goddess of Speech. This is more

than recentering the authority of the

medieval scholastics; tradition had now

become the voice of God pronouncing

on matters of culture. And, it suggests

the presence of something internal,

not external, to the Sanskrit intellectual

formation, however far this something

may still elude our historical recon-

struction, that arrested the capacity for

development by cordoning off the kind

of critique that had once supplied that

formations very life force.

What we may be seeing here is the intel-

lectual dimension of a larger political

transformation. As the early modern

period began and the vast changes inwealth arrived, along with the new

Mughal peace, a new intellectual

movement was emboldened to rethink

the whole past. When the Mughal order

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> Comparative Intellectual Histories of Early Modern Asia

gan to crack or perhaps when the

w social facts of capitalist-colonial

dernity became too much for the

lier conceptual repertoire to capture

alone evaluate a turn to a new tradi-

nalism was found to be salutary. And

ditionalist knowledge has a certain

sis built into it, which may account

the falloff in production we see

oss the Sanskrit world.

me repeat what I alluded to in my

ening remarks, that it is only a cer-

n kind of modernity that makes us

moan what might otherwise be taken

a steady state of civilisational equi-

se: the industrialisation and com-

dification of knowledge in western

dernity, one could argue, in contrasthe reproduction of artisanal intellec-

l practices, are merely a result of the

erlasting uncertainty and agitation

t capitalism brought in its wake, not

ne qua non of an intellectual tradi-

n. Moreover although I cannot go

o the argument here the moderni-

ion of intellectual life in Europe was

onsequence of a widespread dissolu-

n of the previous social, political, and

ritual orders.

highly cultivated, and consequen-

research question for Indian colo-

l history has been well put by David

shbrook: If its long-term relation-

p with India was, at least in part, a

ndition for the rise of Britains Moder-

y, how far conversely were relationsh Britain a condition for Indias

ditionality? I am beginning to won-

whether the traditionalisation that

shbrook and others have found to

a hallmark of early colonialism may

ve been a practice earlier developed

and later adapted from Indian elites

mselves.